Tag: Iraq

Despite the CIA’s uninspiring record for the past 70 years, the media are defending the agency for all it’s worth.
In 1977, Carl Bernstein published an exposé of a CIA program known as Operation Mockingbird, a covert program involving, according to Bernstein, “more than 400 American journalists who in the...

Western politicians, “experts” and journalists are going to have to reboot their stories over the next few days now that Bashar al-Assad's army has retaken control of eastern Aleppo. We’re going to find out if the 250,000 civilians “trapped” in the city were indeed that numerous. We’re going to...

As Syrian fighters push toward the Islamic State’s de-facto capital of Raqqa in northern Syria, Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter announced Saturday that additional U.S. Special Operations forces will head into the country to help the fledgling offensive.
The additional 200 troops will bolster the 300 or so already in...

The “fake news” hysteria has become the cover for the U.S. government and mainstream media to crack down on fact-based journalism that challenges Official Washington’s “Group Thinks.”
A key reason why American foreign debacles have been particularly destructive mostly to the countries attacked but also to the United States is...

The Iraqi army, backed by US-led airstrikes, is trying to capture east Mosul at the same time as the Syrian army and its Shia paramilitary allies are fighting their way into east Aleppo. An estimated 300 civilians have been killed in Aleppo by government artillery and bombing in the...

The news that President-elect Donald Trump called in disgraced retired Gen. David Petraeus for a job interview as possible Secretary of State tests whether Trump's experience in hosting “The Celebrity Apprentice” honed his skills for spotting an incompetent phony or not.
Does Trump need more data than the continuing bedlam...

Under the cover of battling “fake news,” the mainstream U.S. news media and officialdom are taking aim at journalistic skepticism when it is directed at the pronouncements of the U.S. government and its allies.
One might have hoped that the alarm about “fake news” would remind major U.S. news outlets,...

From drone strikes to Navy SEALs, the next president will have more lethal options than ever.
The scope of war-making authorities and powers available to the Trump administration depends on decisions made by the Obama administration. Two recent news reports shed some troubling light on its approach to the coming...

WASHINGTON — The escalating American military engagement in Somalia has led the Obama administration to expand the legal scope of the war against Al Qaeda, a move that will strengthen President-elect Donald J. Trump's authority to combat thousands of Islamist fighters in the chaotic Horn of Africa nation.
The administration...

In its lead editorial on Sunday, The New York Times decried what it deemed “The Digital Virus Called Fake News” and called for Internet censorship to counter this alleged problem, taking particular aim at Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg for letting “liars and con artists hijack his platform.”
As this mainstream...

The Trump White House already resembles a far more extreme version of the disastrous Bush administration.
In yet another post-election example of wish fulfillment, there are rumors circulating that president-elect Donald Trump won’t actually stay in office all four years because he won’t want to do the job. After Trump...

Pro-Iran militias are looking to settle an old grudge in one of the Islamic State's strongholds in northern Iraq.
One of the mysteries about the ongoing offensive in Mosul, where Iraqi security forces are now pressing into the northern, eastern, and southern edges of the city, has been the apparent...

In the wake of Donald Trump's victory, a hot new issue – raised by President Obama in an international setting on Thursday and touted on The New York Times’ front page on Friday – is the problem of “fake news” being disseminated on the Internet.
Major Internet companies, such as...

Donald Trump has repeatedly promised to “drain the swamp” of Washington corruption. The new ethics pledge he announced Wednesday would prohibit registered lobbyists from working for his transition team or administration.
But Trump's supposed aversion to lobbyists has not harmed the fortunes of Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, one of Trump’s...

As U.S. President Barack Obama arrived in Berlin for a farewell visit on Wednesday, German policymakers were scrambling to develop a road map for dealing with the presidency of his successor, Donald Trump. Last week, in a congratulatory note to the president-elect, German Chancellor Angela Merkel gently conditioned Germany's...

UN details series of reported ISIL abuses and warns that the armed group is stockpiling chemicals in civilian areas.
ISIL fighters have reportedly shot and killed scores of civilians in Mosul in recent days, according to the UN, which has also confirmed the discovery of a mass grave in the nearby...

An anonymous Iraqi official recently stated that front line troops “always see US helicopters flying over the ISIL-controlled areas and dropping weapons and urgent aids for them.”
Mosul, Iraq — Since the beginning of Operation: Inherent Resolve, the Islamic State has shown itself to be a very shadowy force. Many...

What is Turkey up to? The question gained fresh urgency today as Turkish Defense Minister Fikri Isik and Land Forces Commander Gen. Zeki Colak inspected troops in Hatay near the Syrian border a day after Turkish forces backed by tanks and other combat vehicles massed near the town of Silopi on Turkey's border...

The Oct. 25 bombing by President Bashar al-Assad’s forces supporting the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) against the Turkish-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA), which is leading Operation Euphrates Shield, is symptomatic of the struggle currently taking place in northern Syria on the al-Bab/Manbij axis. It also underlines the geopolitical conflict pitting...

Iranian politicians from across the spectrum have praised the election of a new president in Lebanon. The Lebanese parliament elected Michel Aoun Oct. 31, ending a more than two-year presidential vacuum in the country.
In Tehran, the move was warmly welcomed. President Hassan Rouhani called Aoun and congratulated him on...

The American journalist, Edward Bernays, is often described as the man who invented modern propaganda.
The nephew of Sigmund Freud, the pioneer of psycho-analysis, it was Bernays who coined the term "public relations" as a euphemism for spin and its deceptions.
In 1929, he persuaded feminists to promote cigarettes for women...

Russia tells US to separate rebels from terrorists.
MOSCOW, OCTOBER 19 - Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan spoke by phone on Tuesday evening with Russian President Vladimir Putin about an accord to make troops of Al-Nusra Front, now known as Fateh al-Sham Front, withdraw from Aleppo "as requested" by Moscow...

Greece - Skala Sikaminias is a little beach town on the northern coast of the Greek island of Lesbos. A year ago, rickety wooden boats and dinghies packed with Syrian refugees began plowing into the narrow stretch of beach next to the taverna in the town square. Within days, the flotilla had swelled to vast proportions; as many as 7,000 Syrian refugees were landing on Lesbos every day.

When Mosul falls, Isis will flee to the safety of Syria. But what then?
The entire Isis caliphate army could be directed against the Assad government and its allies – a scenario which might cause some satisfaction in Washington.
Syria’s army and Hezbollah and Iranian allies are preparing for a massive...

Saudi Arabia and the U.S. have maintained their alliance for seven decades despite disagreements over oil prices, Israel, and, more recently, the Obama administration’s rapprochement with Iran.
Judging by a 2014 email purportedly written by Hillary Clinton to John Podesta, her current campaign chairman, and published by WikiLeaks, there have...

The US is said to have agreed for the safe transfer of terrorists from Iraq to Eastern Syria on the premise ISIS militants fight Russian troops when they get there, a news agency has claimed.
The agreement is said to involve 9,000 extremists who will leave Mosul for eastern areas...

In this week’s episode of The Geopolitical Report with Kurt Nimmo, we examine a recent revelation by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism on a Pentagon psychological operation in Iraq following the 2003 invasion by the United States. From there we look at how the CIA spawned its Operation Mockingbird...

Because we're in danger of getting exactly that.
I wish I could say things were improving between the US and Russia but they aren't. They're rapidly worsening.
There’s so much happening right now, I can only provide a summary of a few of the more interesting and worrying developments.
This report builds...

The Threat of a Proxy War.
Saudi Arabia and Iran's ongoing proxy war in the Middle East is never far from the headlines. The two countries have sparked or exacerbated various conflicts throughout the region, including in Syria and Yemen, two of the most complex and devastating wars in recent...

Official Washington has a new 'group think' that is even more dangerous than the one that led to the Iraq War. This one calls for U.S. escalation of conflicts against Syria and nuclear-armed Russia.
Not since the eve of the U.S. invasion of Iraq has Official Washington’s political/punditry class clamored...